Is TRIZ Really Give the Industry and Workable Ideas?

I came across this site accidentally, Just be amazed to ffind how simply triz have given out leading edge industry good ideas, such as the new concept wind turbin struture discribed in the conference report paper by Professor Isak Bukhman.

here is my question: Should it be so simple to achieve a workable concept? How will leading company such as GE or 3Com view these new concept? Will they accept that they themselves don`t have such ideas or they have something different in their “professional” minds? and if triz can give out such good ideas, are those leading companies actually adopting them? Do we have news about implimenting any of the triz generated wind turbin concepts?

Below is an article of TRIZ at GEShree How GE and others are using alternative techniques such as TRIZ to make R&D more efficient By Steve HammFor General Electric (GE), innovation isn't just about developing better technologies; it's also about not wasting cash on the wrong ones. That focus on saving money is even more important now that the economy has gone into a tailspin, dragging down GE's earnings and share price. The company's researchers have a surprising tool that could help: a method pioneered back in Stalin's Soviet Union.

It's called TRIZ, a Russian acronym for the phrase “the theory of solving inventor's problems.” The core ideas were dreamed up by engineer and science fiction writer Genrich Altshuller, whose critique of the Soviet Union's record on invention in the late 1940s landed him in the gulag. There, he learned from imprisoned scientists and, when he was released, put together a step-by-step innovation method for people who aren't born with the gifts of Edison or Einstein. Since then, his theory has evolved into an elaborate system for analyzing problems and generating solutions. In contrast to brainstorming, TRIZ uses deep analysis of possibilities based on science and math algorithms.

These days, TRIZ is coming on strong at corporations hungry for new ways to improve innovation and productivity beyond what they've already achieved with the widely adopted Six Sigma and Lean techniques. In addition to GE, TRIZ fans include Intel (INTC), Samsung, and Procter & Gamble (PG), as well as smaller companies like FuelCell Energy (FCEL), a Danbury (Conn.) leader in power-generation fuel cells. The company employed TRIZ to evaluate the expensive flanges it uses to join pipes in its generators. After weighing the component costs, effectiveness, and complexity of assembly, FuelCell switched to a new clamping technique that will slash costs by 50%.

Rigorous Review Up FrontGE similarly uses TRIZ at the front end of the innovation process. Small project teams bring problems with them to TRIZ training sessions and use the method to evaluate them, come up with potential solutions, do risk analysis of the alternatives, and then devise conceptual designs that can be tested. By subjecting their ideas to this kind of rigorous review up front, GE scientists hope to avoid costly mistakes down the line. “Conceptual design is a vital step,” says Michael Idelchik, vice-president for advanced technology at GE Global Research. “If you start with an elephant, no matter how you optimize it later, you'll never have a giraffe.”

A number of specialty consulting firms have built practices around TRIZ. GE is working with GEN3 Partners. Though based in Boston, GEN3's 150 employees mostly work from Russia. Others are Russian ?migr?s, including President Semyon Kogan and Simon Litvin, GEN3's chief science officer, childhood friends who grew up in what was then Leningrad to become scientists during the Soviet era.

GEN3 has added some of its own twists to TRIZ. It taps into a global network of 8,000 science experts and finds solutions for problems in one industry by locating applicable technology in another. “Don't invent if you don't have to,” says Kogan. “Go and find solutions that have been used and apply them to your problem, and you'll have a higher probability of success.” Under GEN3's tutelage, GE found technology in the radar industry for use in its next-generation MRI machines.

It's difficult to predict how big a deal TRIZ will become. University of Michigan professor Jeffrey Liker, an expert in the Lean manufacturing discipline, calls it a niche tool. But GE's Idelchik says it could provide big paybacks. So far, 382 GE employees in 70 teams have completed the training. Supervisors have green-lighted 90% of their conceptual designs, and product development is now under way. Not bad for an obscure theory born in Stalinist times.

Hamm is a senior writer for BusinessWeek in New York and author of the Globespotting blog.

Good question, in a May 31, 2006 BusinessWeek article, included a list of American companies that have applied TRIZ for innovation, that included Boeing, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Motorola, Raytheon, and Xerox, among others.

The articles discusses how the use of TRIZ at GE, and other leading companies, has supported a range innovations. A good idea, is good idea regardless of where it comes from, so the acceptance of TRIZ based concepts are welcomed and have been intergraded into many innovations at these leading companies.

The statement that people promoting TRIZ are using “wisdom in hindsight” is incorrect for 2 reasons:

1. TRIZ is being used to create solutions consistently and systematically.2. By definition, ALL good ideas are logical in hindsight. So, believing that thinking or innovation tools are not needed just because a proposed solution is “obvious in hindsight” is terribly misguided. People who think that way are falling for the trap Edward de Bono has pointed out so many times. The path is asymmetric. You need tools like TRIZ.

There is obviously some misunderstanding behind this question. TRIZ is not only built around heuristics. At the beginning of a problem solving process, there is a problem formulation. This approach is included in ARIZ, the algorithm developed first by Altshuller up to 1985. In this way, TRIZ is also a guide for a well formulated problem and, as stated elsewhere, it may lead to breakthrough ideas without further investigation. In the industry context, this part of the “algorithm” (some did labelled it as the “situation questionnaire”) leverage the team effectiveness. It may appear as very simple, but it helps certainly a lot…. If the question is more related to the efficiency of the heuristics, the doubt is understandable. There is wide scope of ideas and techniques behind each of them, but Inventive Principles or Standards Solutions are workable enough to prevent a project team to focus to early on known solutions, the more because they are linked now in different applications with lists of techniques. So, finally, the right question could be reformulated in this way: do TRIZ heuristics help to find solutions? My answer: no, because you have first to formulate your problem…and yes, because the different available sets are comprehensive enough to orient further search.

Absolutely! The proof is in the pudding. Back in December, 1993 I was helping with a TRIZ based workshop for GM. 9 projects in 4.5 days. One of the project owners, a bright fellow with a dozen, or so patents to his name, was very skeptical of our ability to provide anything of value in his situation. When we finished an express analysis of his system, an automatic transmission, together we developed 4-5 very promising directions. TRIZ forces a different thought process on its users and teaches the discovery and utilization of resources. I am not sure about TRIZ fanatics, but among true TRIZniks we have a saying – Not every problem could be solved, but every situation could be improved.